


Lost and Found

by hannasus



Series: Angel: Afterlife [4]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Action/Adventure, Friendship, Gen, Grief, Humor, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-14
Updated: 2010-10-14
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:18:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hannasus/pseuds/hannasus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Episode three of a virtual season six series that picks up where "Not Fade Away" (5x22) left off and reboots the show in a new setting. After the showdown with Wolfram & Hart, Angel, Spike and Aggie (Lorne's psychic friend from "Under the Rainbow") flee to Texas and start helping the hopeless again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _May 2004_

Spike sucked in a breath and felt the nicotine-laced air sink deep into his dead lungs. He didn't know why it felt so good—there wasn't enough nicotine in a cigarette to affect his vampire metabolism—but it did. Maybe it was something about the physical act of smoking that appealed to him: holding the cigarette, flicking the ash, sucking in and then blowing out a gray cloud of smoke. Plus—and this was maybe the most important bit—it looked dead cool.

The late afternoon sun had begun to sink into the west, coating the world in a syrupy, otherworldly glow. On the east side of the veranda where Spike stood there was plenty of shade to protect him from the last of the killing rays. He leaned against the wisteria-draped railing, enjoying his brief respite from the claustrophobic atmosphere inside Aggie's house, and flicked cigarette ash into the bushes.

It was decent of the witch to let them stay at her place, and Spike was appropriately grateful. But it wasn't exactly five-star accommodations. He and Angel and Aggie had been working on the house all afternoon and it was still only barely livable. The dust and cobwebs and various insect infestations were enough to make even a hardened vamp like Spike squeamish. Especially the bloody cockroaches. The cockroaches they grew down here in Texas were as big as the armadillos he'd seen splattered up and down the shoulders of the highways. They reminded him of the roaches down in South America—which was not what you'd call a fond memory.

And then there were the crosses. The crosses that were all over the bleeding house. Aggie had gone round first thing and removed as many as she could find, which was right nice of her. But it seemed like every time Spike opened a drawer or a cabinet he found another one. His finger still throbbed from the one he'd come across in the toolbox, hidden amongst the screwdrivers. What kind of person keeps a cross in a toolbox, anyway? Besides a slayer, of course. Aggie's gran hadn't been a slayer, though. Just some batty old Catholic voodoo something or other. Go figure.

To make things worse, Aggie had been acting like a proper bitch all day. When she wasn't taking their heads off she was withdrawn and sullen enough to give Angel a run for his money. There was something weird going on with her, something to do with the house itself, or with that dead grandmother of hers, maybe.

Whatever. It wasn't Spike's business or his problem. He had his own troubles. Like the fact that once again, he'd found himself stuck with Angel.

Somehow he always seemed to end up stumbling along in Angel's wake. He tried to tell himself that in this case Angel had actually followed his lead—or been made to follow, anyway, with the assistance of some heavy duty veterinary tranquilizers—but he knew it wasn't really true. Angel was the star attraction in this dog-and-pony show, and Spike was just the supporting player. The amusing sidekick.

It was nothing new, but that didn't mean he wasn't fucking well sick of it.

Things hadn't exactly been easy for old Spike, either, but no one seemed to care much about that. Take that whole reincarnation business, for example. That hadn't exactly been a stroll in the bloody park for him. And losing Fred—the only person who'd been genuinely nice to him since he'd come back—had hit him harder than he'd care to admit. Then Wes and Gunn had fallen, one right after the other, and that had been another couple of punches to the gut. Maybe he'd never exactly gotten on with them, but they'd been stand-up blokes, the both of them, and they'd had his back on more than one occasion. Things shouldn't have fallen out like that.

He dropped his cigarette butt on the porch and ground it out with the heel of his boot. On further consideration he bent down and picked it up again. He didn't relish another lecture from the Wicked Witch of the South about leaving his fag ends lying around the place.

What he needed to do was come up with some kind of plan. He'd had his soul for a while now, it was probably time he figured out what he wanted to do it. Angel had always strutted around like he had some sort of higher calling, but Spike had never felt anything like that. Maybe he never would. He liked helping people well enough, but how was he supposed to go about it? Patrol like Buffy? Open up some kind of shop like Angel? Neither idea was overly appealing.

He watched as a twenty-year-old Lincoln Continental in near-mint condition pulled into the driveway of the house next door. A grandmotherly-looking Hispanic woman dressed in her Sunday best got out of the car. She started in alarm when she noticed Spike watching her from the shadows.

He smiled and gave her a friendly wave. Wouldn't do to go alienating Aggie's neighbors, after all. And he wasn't in the habit of being rude to little old ladies. Not anymore, anyway.

The woman stared at him, open-mouthed, then crossed herself and ran into her house as if she were being chased by a pack of wolves.

Terrific, he thought. Another bloody Catholic.

A scream issued from Aggie's house, startling a flock of doves that had been milling around in the overgrown yard. Spike raced inside and found Aggie in the kitchen, only a fraction of a second before Angel got there. The girl looked perfectly all right, as far as he could tell. "What's the emergency?" Spike asked.

Wide-eyed, Aggie pointed into the open cabinet under the sink. "A roach," she said, her voice an octave higher than usual.

Spike and Angel both stared at her blankly.

"It crawled on me!" Aggie looked from one vampire to the other, apparently expecting more of a reaction. "Do something."

"What?" said Angel.

"Kill it. That's what vampires do, right? Kill things."

"I'm not the bloody Orkin man," grumbled Spike.

Muttering under his breath, Angel snatched a broom out of the pantry and bent down to look under the sink. He jabbed the broom handle at something in the recesses of the cabinet, swore, and jabbed a couple more times. Spike watched in amusement. Apparently it was an extremely crafty roach.

The front doorbell chimed and Aggie waved an impatient hand at Spike. "Go answer that."

That's right, Spike thought sourly, order me around like a servant: clean this, kill that, answer the sodding door. Next he'd be hand washing her scanties for her. He sulked his way to the front hall and swung the door open.

The old lady from next door stood on the porch. In her left hand was a cross. In her right she wielded a large wooden knitting needle like a stake. She thrust the cross up into his face.

"Bloody hell!" he shouted, and jumped backwards, knocking over the umbrella stand in his haste to get away.

The woman stepped purposefully into the house, her eyes burning with righteous fury. Her forearms were thick as bread loaves, her knees blocky and toughened from a lifetime of kneeling at Mass. "The devil reclaim you, spawn of hell!" she shouted, advancing on Spike.

Spike backed away, desperately looking for an escape route. Not that he was actually afraid of her, mind, but he wasn't keen to get into a tussle with an old woman. There was absolutely no way to come out of something like that looking like a hero.

Aggie burst in from the kitchen. "Mrs. Rivera, stop!"

Spike grabbed onto Aggie and thrust her between himself the madwoman with the knitting needle. It wasn't his proudest moment, using a woman as a human shield, but he didn't see the point in being a proud pile of dust. Angel had followed Aggie out of the kitchen, broom still in hand, but he hung well back, out of the fray.

The old woman's eyes widened when she saw Aggie, and she tightened her grip on the cross, whitening the brown skin of her knuckles. "It grieves me to see you this way, _mija._ The devil may have taken your soul, but I will not let him desecrate your body!"

Aggie reached out and wrapped her fingers around the cross. She didn't try to take it, just stood there with her skin pressed against the wood. "I'm not a vampire," she said. "See?"

Mrs. Rivera narrowed her eyes, keeping her weapons leveled. "Ay! Now why don't you just hand that cross over to your friends, too, eh?"

Aggie shook her head. "I can't do that."

"Ah ha!" shouted the woman in triumph. "I knew it! I knew they were vampires!"

"They are," said Aggie. "But it's okay."

"I don't know what kind of nonsense you've been listening to out there in La La Land, _loquita,_ but vampires are not okay!"

"Not usually, no, but these two are different."

"Different how?" The old lady lowered the knitting needle just a bit.

"They've got souls," said Aggie.

"Hmmph. Vampires don't have souls."

"These two do. And I'd be in a position to know, wouldn't I?"

"I guess you would," conceded Mrs. Rivera. "Still doesn't explain why you're inviting them into your _abuela_ 's house."

Aggie shrugged. "They needed a place to stay."

"Hmmph," repeated Mrs. Rivera. "I never thought I'd live to see the day you'd let vampires into Antoinette's home, may she rest in peace."

"Hang on," said Aggie. "You knew there were vampires in the house and you came over here by yourself? With a knitting needle?"

"I wasn't going to stand by and let some demon take my friend's baby girl. I thought you were already dead and that was how they were able to come into the house."

The old woman had cheek, Spike thought. You had to admire that. Even if she was barking mad.

"How about I hold onto those for now?" suggested Aggie, reaching for the cross and knitting needle.

"I'm not going to kill them," said Mrs. Rivera indignantly, tucking the weapons into her handbag. "If you say they're your guests I'll respect that. I don't like it, but I'll respect it."

Spike reached around Aggie and stuck his hand out. "I'm Spike," he said cheerfully. "Pleased to meet you."

Mrs. Rivera raised one bushy eyebrow and glared at his hand until he took it away.

"That's Angel back there lurking in the corner," said Aggie.

Mrs. Rivera turned her formidable countenance on Angel, who smiled awkwardly. "Hmmph," she said.

"Would you like some coffee?" offered Aggie. "I could make some coffee."

"I'm not drinking coffee with any vampires," snapped Mrs. Rivera. "Now that I know you're alive and well, I'll just be going back home."

Aggie followed her to the door. "Thank you for looking after the house while I was gone," she said. "I really appreciate it."

"You're welcome," said Mrs. Rivera. "You're here to stay?"

"For now, anyway."

Mrs. Rivera nodded approvingly. "Good. You've always had a fierce spirit, but you cannot shut out the voices of your ancestors. You remember that."

Spike didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but it seemed to spook Aggie. The color drained from the girl's face and he was almost certain he saw a flash of fear in her eyes.

Mrs. Rivera aimed one last withering glare at Spike and Angel before she left. Aggie shut the door behind her and went back into the kitchen without a word.

"What was that about, you think?" asked Spike.

"No idea," said Angel.

They followed her into the kitchen. She was loading the dishwasher, slamming the dishes around a little more roughly than was strictly advisable.

"Take it easy, pet," warned Spike, dropping into a chair at the old formica table. "You won't have any left to eat off of if you keep that up."

"I told you not to call me pet," she snapped. But she eased up on the dishes a little.

"You okay?" asked Angel.

"I'm fine," she said brusquely. "Have you picked your rooms yet?" she asked, changing the subject.

"Top of the stairs," said Spike before Angel could answer. He wanted that one because it had a telly and because the only window was north-facing. Also it was the biggest.

"I was thinking maybe I'd take the attic." said Angel. "If it's all right."

Spike cursed himself for not thinking to check out the attic. There was probably four times as much space up there. Then again, there were probably four times as many spiders, too. "If Angel's taking the attic then I get both the bedrooms, right?"

"It gets hot up in the attic," said Aggie.

Angel shrugged. "Heat doesn't really bother me."

"You know, there's a storage shed out back if you want to be even farther away from me."

"That's not what I—"

"It's fine," she said. "I think there's an old window air conditioner in the garage you can probably take up there."

"Thanks," said Angel. "I'm going to go and start cleaning it up."

"Great," said Aggie, snatching up two handfuls of silverware and cramming them into the machine.

When Angel had gone Spike said, "It's the psychic thing, you know. He doesn't want you peeking into his brain when he's having one of his great bloody mope fests. Which is all the time, by the way."

"I know," said Aggie, reaching for the dish soap. "It's just as well, he's giving me a headache anyway. The whole house is drenched in his angst. I'm surprised you can't smell it. It smells like feet."

"Is that what that is?" said Spike. "Thought it was the carpets."

She slammed the dishwasher shut and turned to look at him. "Why doesn't it bother you? That I might snoop on all your secret thoughts, I mean?"

He leaned back and shrugged. "Snoop away, luv, I've got nothing to hide."

"Everyone's got something to hide," said Aggie, sitting down across from him. "You're not exactly rainbows and fuzzy bunnies inside."

"Damn right," he said. "I'm all about the motorbikes and rock and roll." He gave her his best punk rocker snarl.

"Dream on, James Dean." She sighed and rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hands. "Last night, is it possible that I, uh ..." she hesitated, looking embarrassed, "fell asleep in Angel's lap at some point?"

"'Fraid so," he said, trying not to enjoy her discomfort too much.

"Ugh." She slumped forward so that her face was buried in her arms.

"You do that a lot?" asked Spike.

She raised her head enough to peer up at him. "What? Put my head in strange men's laps?"

"Drinking to dull the pain."

"Not a lot," she said. "Sometimes, though, it's the only thing that blocks out the noise around me."

Spike nodded. That's what he'd figured. Hell, if he had to go through life drowning in everyone else's tragedies all the sodding time he'd never stop drinking.

"It's not usually that bad," said Aggie. "I'm not usually that bad. But it's been a bad week."

"Yeah," said Spike, thinking about Gunn and Wes. "It bloody well has."


	2. Chapter 2

Aggie had lied when Angel asked if there were any ghosts in her grandmother's house. Her house, she reminded herself, even though it didn't feel like hers. But whoever the house belonged to, it was definitely haunted.

That was why she'd fled to L.A. four years ago and why she'd stayed away until now.

It had started with a whisper, the day after her grandmother passed away. So faint Aggie wasn't even sure she'd really heard it. Until she heard it again.

_Agnes._

She heard the voice several more times over the days that followed, whispering her name. Once she swore she felt a puff of air on her face, as though someone were whispering in her ear. Another time she heard the sound of laughter, faint but distinct, and painfully familiar.

When she felt something very much like someone running their fingers through her hair, one night when she was alone in the house, she knew she'd had enough. She packed a bag, bought a bus ticket to Los Angeles, and never looked back. Until now.

She'd really thought four years would be enough time. She'd thought her grandmother's ghost would have moved on by now, or passed over, or just gotten bored and gone away.

She was wrong.

Now it was perfume. Specifically, Avon's Unforgettable. It had been her grandmother's favorite, years ago, before it was discontinued. And it was the first thing Aggie had smelled when she stepped back into the house two days ago—but just for an instant, and then it was gone.

She'd smelled it again yesterday when she was in the kitchen cleaning out the cupboards. Just a whiff, just for a second.

Tonight the smell was was in her bedroom closet. And this time it was more than just a whiff; it was downright overpowering.

She rummaged through the cramped closet, her head aching from the cloying scent, looking for the source of the odor. She peered into shoes, felt around in coat pockets, and checked inside every handbag she'd ever owned. Nothing. She stood on her tiptoes and dragged a stack of old shoe boxes off the shelf.

"Ow!" she muttered as a tiny jewelry box that had been perched on top of the stack tumbled down and bounced off the top of her head.

She set the shoe boxes on the floor and looked to see what had fallen. The little box lay open with a necklace puddled on the floor beside it: a rough-looking chunk of iron suspended on a leather thong.

Aggie drew in a long, unsteady breath.

Her grandmother had given her that necklace for her 18th birthday. It was a piece of meteoric iron from the Canyon Diablo crater in Arizona, said to have magical properties of protection and warding. In other words, the damned thing was supposed to ward off ghosts, witches, and evil spirits. The irony would have been hilarious, if it wasn't so painful.

The smell of the perfume continued to grow stronger. There was a taste of copper in her mouth and she felt suddenly queasy.

Aggie bolted for the bathroom and threw up the pizza she'd had for dinner. When her stomach finally calmed she washed her face and brushed her teeth before forcing herself to go back into the bedroom. She walked over to the closet and glared at the necklace lying on the floor. The whole room reeked of Unforgettable now.

She stooped and picked up the pendant. As soon as her fingers touched it the smell went away. Just like that.

Fine, then, she'd wear the damn necklace if it was what the old woman wanted. She kicked all the boxes and bags and shoes back into the closet and slammed the door. Then she went downstairs, in serious need of some ice cream.

Angel was sitting at the kitchen table reading a book he'd taken from the study. He glanced up briefly when she walked in, but didn't say anything. He hardly ever said anything.

She got a pint of Blue Bell out of the freezer ate it over the sink, watching the moths beat themselves against the kitchen window as her grandmother's wind chimes tinkled atonally in the warm night air. It was only May and hadn't even begun to get truly hot, but compared to Los Angeles it already felt like a sauna. In another month, Aggie knew, the breeze would be gone altogether and the chimes would hang limp and lifeless in the bruising Texas heat.

She and her new roommates had worked hard to get the old house habitable again. After two full days of cleaning and airing and scrubbing and dusting—and a much-needed visit from the exterminator—the place was nearly back to normal. Or as normal as a house she was sharing with two vampires and the ghost of her dead grandmother could be, anyway.

Even with her back to Angel she could sense his presence behind her, like a storm cloud hanging over the room. He worked so hard to maintain his mask of impassivity, but she could feel the emotions roiling just beneath the surface: grief, guilt, shame, anguish, and at the heart of it all, a malignant rage powerful enough to make her blood run cold. He'd been like this ever since they'd left L.A., ever since Gunn died, and she didn't know how much more of it she could take.

She took her ice cream over to the table and sat down across from him. "Feel like going out tonight?" she asked.

He didn't bother looking up. "No."

As far as she knew he'd left the house exactly no times since he'd gotten here. "Planning to stay cooped up in here forever, then?" He didn't answer. "I'm not bequeathing you the house in my will, you know, so you'll have to leave eventually."

Nothing.

She knew she should just let it go, but she was in a foul mood and his constant silence was getting on her nerves. She'd rather have him shouting at her than battering her with this horrible, oppressive silence. And while she was utterly powerless to stop her grandmother from haunting her, she at least had a fighting chance of kicking Angel out this funk. "Did you know Spike went out patrolling tonight?" she asked.

"Good for him," said Angel, without taking his eyes from his book.

"That's all you've got to say?"

Angel shut the book with a sharp snap and looked up at her. "Let's get it over with," he said.

"What?"

"The part where you lecture me about getting on with my life. Let me guess, you think I should be out there with Spike, keeping the streets safe for the little people."

She raised her eyebrows. "Since when are we little people to you?"

Irritation flashed across his face. "You know what I meant."

"Yeah, I do," she said. "And that's what worries me."

Angel needed to be out in the world again, she was certain of that. It was dangerous for someone with so much potential for malevolence to cut himself off from humanity. He needed a cause to fight for, or something in his life to care about. If he allowed himself to become too detached, Aggie was afraid he might just forget why he was supposed to be fighting that demon inside him in the first place. It's not like having a soul automatically prevented you from doing evil. Humanity was proof enough of that.

"Maybe if you were helping people again it'd snap you out of this pity party," she said.

"I did the champion thing already. All it got me was a lot of dead friends."

"I'm not talking about waging some mythic quest for redemption. There is no redemption, as far as I'm concerned, no one keeping tabs on your balance sheet except you. We are who we are and we do what we do and things happen, good and bad, regardless of the purity of our precious souls."

"Yeah, I got that message already," he said. "Loud and clear." He stared at her with eyes as black as the tar that washed up on the beach in Galveston. The same black color as his aura.

"Why'd you do it?" she asked, meeting his stare. "Your big showdown with Wolfram & Hart. Why now?"

"I wanted it to be over."

"You mean you wanted to die." It wasn't a question. She already knew the answer.

He looked away and shook his head.

"But you didn't die," she said.

"Because of you," he said bitterly.

"That was Lorne's doing," she said. "I was just the messenger." She got up and poured herself a glass of water from the tap. A little spotted gecko was clinging to the outside of the kitchen window, stalking the moths drawn there by the kitchen light. The gecko's skin was so pale he was almost transparent. He held himself perfectly still, waiting for a moth to flutter into range. Aggie turned around and looked at Angel.

"My mother killed herself when I was eight," she said. "She dropped me off at school one day, drove down to Galveston and just ... walked into the surf." Angel looked up at her but didn't say anything. "A shrimp boat fished her body out of the Gulf off the Boliver Peninsula. I hated her for it, because it was just so goddamned selfish. I don't care how bad things are, there's no excuse for doing that, not when there are people counting on you. So what if your life's hard? Everybody's life is hard sometimes. You suffer through it. That's what the rest of us are doing. This isn't a storybook, there's no happily ever after, there's just more life."

"I'm sorry," Angel said. She didn't know if he was apologizing because her mother had given up or because he had. Maybe both.

"You survived," she said. "Despite your best efforts. But you're still walking around like a corpse. Whatever this thing is you're doing now, it's not living. You used to be someone who helped people. And you can talk about higher powers and redemption all you want, but the truth is you chose to help people because that's who you were. So what are you choosing now, Angel? Who are you now?"

"I don't know," he said quietly. "That's the problem."

He was like this bottomless black hole of despair, sucking in everything around it. But there was one tiny spark of light in the midst of all that darkness. It was so faint it almost wasn't there, but she could sense it, like a glimmer of silver moonlight at the bottom of a well.

"Who's Connor?" she asked, knowing as she said it that she was probably begging for trouble.

Angel didn't move. Not a muscle. But the surge of his anger hit her like a physical blow. " _Don't._ " The word came out in a brittle hiss of sound like it'd been scraped from the bottom of his soul. "You stay out my head."

"You're projecting at me," she shot back. "You're like this tsunami of misery crashing against my brain. It's a little hard to ignore."

His eyes bored into her with barely-suppressed animosity. "Try."

They stared at one another in cold silence. You could have flash frozen a 20-pound turkey in the cold of that silence. It seemed to stretch on forever, like this living, breathing thing that would just keep growing until it filled up the room and then the house and eventually the whole world.

It was broken by a loud knock at the back door. Angel went from Ragey Hulk to Protective Hulk in the blink of an eye. All he did was stand up, but his whole posture was tensed and alert, ready to put himself between Aggie and any potential danger. It would have been sweet if it wasn't so goddamned terrifying.

She seriously doubted that anything half as dangerous as the pissed-off vampire in her kitchen could be at the door. And she was right, because when she opened it she found a skinny, hollow-eyed young woman standing on the back stoop.

"You're Antoinette's girl?" said the woman anxiously.

"Yes," replied Aggie warily.

"I need a charm for my boyfriend. He's in trouble with the police and—"

"I can't help you," interrupted Aggie.

"But Antoinette—"

"Antoinette's dead." The words came out more harshly then she intended.

The woman drew back a little, but she didn't give up. "They said you had her gifts, that you knew the ways."

"Who said?"

"Monkey Shoes."

"He told you wrong. I can't help you." She shut the door in the woman's face and turned to find Angel giving her an infuriatingly smug look.

"What?" she said.

"Not feeling the least bit hypocritical, are you?"

"Helping that woman's criminal boyfriend avoid the cops will help me sleep at night how, exactly?"

"He could be innocent. You didn't even listen long enough to find out."

"I didn't need to listen, I could see it in her aura plain as day."

"Whatever you say."

She didn't know why she felt the need to explain herself, why she even cared what Angel thought, but she did. "I grew up in this house," she said. "I know what it's like to have people coming to the door at all hours begging you to get their no-good relatives out of trouble or put the fix on anyone who's ever done them wrong. I don't want any part of it."

She shoved the ice cream back in the freezer and went into the front hall to grab her purse.

"Where are you going?" asked Angel, following her.

"To kick somebody's ass."

As she stepped out into the humid Texas night she felt the sweat form on her skin like water beading on a cold glass. She was surprised to find Angel right behind her. "You're not actually coming?" she said. "Like, outside of the house?"

He shrugged. "I guess I am."

  
Elysium was a dingy neighborhood bar that had earned a rep as a goth hangout thanks to the name and to the crudely-drawn skull on the sign above the door. The interior was perfectly generic, though, like any other neighborhood bar around town. No red velvet, no fog machines, no Dead Can Dance on the jukebox.

"So, what, is this like the local underworld bar?" asked Angel skeptically when they walked inside.

"Something like that." Aggie scanned the dark room for familiar faces.

"Looks pretty lame."

"Remind me again why you're here?"

"Someone told me I should get out more."

"Uh huh. You wouldn't be trying to protect me or anything, would you?"

"From what?" he asked, casting a disdainful eye around the bar. "Goth posers?"

Aggie ignored him, because she'd spied the person she was looking for behind the bar.

"Agnes Belfleur, it's about time you came to see me," said the lanky bartender, flashing a mouthful of cheap silver grills.

"Monkey Shoes, I am gonna beat your sorry ass!" she snapped.

"Damn, woman, what's your problem?"

"You've been sending people to my door!"

"Just the one!"

"I don't do that work and you damn well know it."

"Yeah, but Eva was desperate, on account of Luis got himself—"

"I don't care," growled Aggie. "I don't lay down fixes."

"All right, fine." He held up his hands in a gesture of capitulation. "I won't do it no more."

"And take those fool things out of your mouth," she said. "You look like an idiot."

"Now that's just cold. I was gonna buy you a drink as a peace offering, but now I don't think I will." He cocked his head at Angel. "Who's your friend?"

"That's Angel," she said, giving the vampire an icy glare. "And he's not my friend."

"In that case I'm gonna buy him a drink," said Monkey Shoes. "What'll you have, man?"

"A beer's fine," said Angel.

"One beer coming up, for my new friend Angel."

"And I'll have a bourbon," said Aggie.

"I'm gonna need to see your money in advance," said Monkey Shoes, twisting the cap off a bottle of Shiner Bock.

"Why do they call you Monkey Shoes?" asked Angel.

Monkey Shoes grinned, giving them another view of his ghastly grills. "When I was a kid I had these shoes with a picture of a monkey on 'em. Wore them things all the damn time."

He set a glass of bourbon in front of Aggie and took the ten she'd laid on the bar. "Enjoy your drinks," he said. She thought about asking for her change but decided it wasn't worth it.

"I was sort of hoping for a more interesting story," said Angel when Monkey Shoes had moved down the bar to take care of another customer.

"Aren't we all," muttered Aggie, sipping her whiskey.

Elysium didn't seem to have changed much in the four years she'd been gone. The place had always attracted a weird mix of clientele: some locals from the neighborhood, a heavy dose of the black fingernail polish and trench coat crowd, a few Rice students slumming it, and—keeping a very low profile—a smattering of actual practicing witches, rootworkers, warlocks, _santeros,_ and magi. She didn't recognize anyone here tonight, but she'd been away from the community for a while. Then she caught a glimpse of white-blond hair and realized she did recognize somebody, after all.

Aggie picked up her drink and wandered down to the other end of the bar where Spike was chatting up a tall woman in skin-tight black vinyl. "Hey," she said, tapping the vampire on the shoulder.

"Aggie," said Spike, turning around. "And look, it's Angel, too. Taking the shut-in out for some air, are we?"

Angel had followed her over, and he greeted Spike with a half-hearted scowl.

"I'm going to go powder my nose," said Spike's companion demurely.

"So how's the patrolling?" asked Aggie. "Find a lot of damsels in distress in bars, do you?"

"Some," said Spike indignantly. "Look, it's not my fault this town is deader than Keith Moon. Not a sodding demon to be found. What am I supposed to do? Wander round running off gang taggers?"

"Of course not," said Aggie. "So you figured you'd stop off for a drink, pick up a dude ..."

Spike did a satisfying double take. "Sorry?"

Aggie leaned in conspiratorially. "Your lady friend in there? She's a he."

"She's not. I can tell these things, you know. Vamp senses and all." He looked to Angel for support. "Back me up, mate."

"Adam's apple," said Angel.

"Bugger," said Spike, downing the rest of his beer. "Come on, let's get out of here before she comes back from the loo."

  
"It's this damn humidity, I'm telling you," said Spike when they were back at home. "Mucks with my sense of smell." They were sitting around the kitchen table. Aggie was nursing a beer; Angel and Spike were drinking mugs of the pig's blood she'd gotten from the local Vietnamese butcher.

Aggie rolled her eyes. "Whatever you say." Her mood had improved a bit since the excursion to the bar. Maybe it was the change of scenery, or maybe it was Spike's lady friend. Either way it was all for the good.

"So there aren't any demons around?" said Angel. "Really?"

"None that I could bloody find," said Spike.

"They're around," said Aggie. "You just have to know where to look. This isn't L.A., they're not going to walk up and introduce themselves."

There was a knock on the kitchen door.

"Or maybe they will," said Spike.

"Oh, hell no." Aggie shoved back her chair and threw open the door.

A woman stood on the stoop, eyes red-rimmed from crying, clutching a dog-eared photograph in her hands. Her aura was twisted with grief, so strongly that Aggie took an instinctive step back. "Are you Antoinette?" asked the woman in a shaky voice.

Aggie shook her head. "No."

"This is the hoodoo woman's house, though?"

"I'm sorry," said Aggie. "She passed."

"But my daughter ... my baby girl is missing." The woman held out the photo in a shaking hand.

Aggie didn't move. Angel had followed her over to the door and he reached out to take the picture. Aggie didn't want to look at it, but she couldn't help it. The photo was of a smiling, gap-toothed girl of six or seven. It was one of those generic school pictures with the fuzzy gray backdrop.

Angel gazed at the picture for a moment and then looked up at Aggie.

"You can help me can't you?" pleaded the woman. "Please."

Aggie didn't say anything. She wasn't the one who'd made a career out of helping the hopeless.

"Of course we can," said Angel. "Why don't you come in and tell us what happened?"


	3. Chapter 3

The woman's name was Demitra. She sat at the kitchen table, clutching the glass of iced tea Aggie had given her, and told them how she'd found her daughter's bed empty and the window wide open when she'd gone to get her up that morning.

Angel listened silently, with a gnawing sense of dread. It was all starting again. After everything that had happened, he'd somehow come full circle and ended up right back where he'd begun: alone, empty, torn away from everyone he cared about, and confronted by a frightened woman begging for his help. He felt like he was trapped in some Sisyphean cycle of torment, doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over. It was Aggie and Spike pushing him down the path now instead of Cordelia and Doyle, but otherwise the whole situation was unsettlingly reminiscent of the early days of Angel Investigations. _We help the hopeless,_ chirped Cordy's voice in his head. _If that's you, leave a message._

The memory provoked an overwhelming feeling of betrayal. He'd done it all for her. She'd made him believe he could win, that there was something to win. And then she'd abandoned him. Because of her, he'd thrown the Hail Mary pass that got Wes and Gunn killed. But it was all a lie. There were no winners in this game, only casualties. He'd spent the last two days scrubbing Aggie's house as if menial work could somehow scrub the guilt out of his soul, but Clorox couldn't wash the blood from his hands any more than all great Neptune's ocean could wash Macbeth's.

If he'd known back then what he knew now, what would he have done differently? Would he have been able to save Doyle? Would he have seen what lay ahead for the rest of them and cut his losses?

Probably not. He knew now that he couldn't have quit. Not just because of the visions, but because of the endless succession of helpless victims with nowhere else to turn. They'd compelled him to keep going, when nothing else could. There was always another soul to save, another battle to fight. He could no more have turned his back on them then than he could turn his back on Demitra and her lost daughter now. It was who he was. He remembered that now, even if he'd tried to forget.

"Did you call the police?" Aggie asked Demitra.

"First thing," said Demitra. "They've been out looking for her all day, sniffing around the neighborhood with dogs and whatnot, but they're not gonna find her."

"Why not?" asked Angel.

"Because it was the Hairy Man who did it. He took my Maya."

Angel looked at Aggie. She shook her head slightly but didn't say anything.

"What's a Hairy Man, then?" asked Spike.

"She knows," said Demitra, nodding at Aggie.

"It's a folktale from the swamps," said Aggie carefully. "About a monster who catches children and puts them in a sack."

"And what makes you think this hairy bloke took Maya?" asked Spike.

"Because she told me she saw him!" said Demitra. "Twice before, just like in the stories. She ran and hid from him both times, but the third time he came right into the house and he took my baby, I just know it!" Her eyes welled with tears and she plucked another tissue from the box Aggie had brought into the kitchen for her.

"Where did she see him before?" asked Angel gently.

"Once by the Quick Stop down on the corner. And then again on the sidewalk right in front of our house."

"And what's this Hairy Man look like, exactly?" said Spike.

Demitra blew her nose. "Ugly and hairy all over, with pointy sharp teeth and hoofed feet like a cow's. And he's always carrying his big ol' sack swinging over his shoulder."

"Cow's feet, eh?" Spike looked thoughtful. "Don't see a lot of them around. Demons tend to prefer goat's feet as a rule."

"I should have gotten her a dog like she wanted," said Demitra wringing the tissue in her hands. "The Hairy Man can't stand dogs."

"What about Maya's father?" asked Aggie.

"He's dead," Demitra told them. "In the ground five years."

"Could someone in his family have taken her?" persisted Aggie. "Maybe Maya's grandparents, or an aunt or an uncle?"

"He didn't have any family and no one else ever wanted my baby girl but me." Demitra dissolved into a fresh bout of choked sobs.

Angel watched Aggie back discretely away, positioning herself as far from the distraught woman as she could without actually leaving the room. Her arms were crossed tightly across her chest, her lips pressed together in a thin line. It must be hard for her to be so close to so much naked grief. He found he didn't have a lot of sympathy for her tonight.

He ran Demitra through a few more questions, none of which revealed anything remotely helpful, and promised her they'd do everything they could. "Do you need a ride home?" he asked, seeing her to the door.

"No, my sister's waiting outside in the car. She didn't want me to come, but I knew I'd find help here."

As soon as he'd closed the door behind Demitra, Aggie said, "She's crazy, you know."

"You think she hurt the girl herself?" asked Angel.

Aggie shook her head. "She's not lying, she doesn't know where Maya is. But she honestly believes the Hairy Man came into her house and stuffed her kid in a sack."

"Maybe he did," said Spike.

"He doesn't exist," said Aggie. "It's just a story."

"Right, you mean like vampires?" said Spike.

Aggie threw him a look. "No, unlike vampires, the Hairy Man's not real."

"Maybe," said Angel. "Or maybe the stories are based on a real demon. It's happened before."

"The girl probably just ran away," said Aggie. "I'll bet she's hiding out at a friend's house, eating Moon Pies and watching SpongeBob."

"If that's the case don't you think the police would have found her by now?" said Angel.

Spike stood up. "Are we going to sit around all night arguing or are we going to go look for that little girl? I vote for looking, by the way."

"We're going to look for her," said Angel grimly.

 _See, you can save the damsel and make decent money,_ taunted Cordy's voice in his head. _Is this a great country or what?_

  
Demitra lived in a shotgun shack on the other side of the bayou. It was in the Freedmen's Town Historic District, according to one of the signs they passed, but there didn't seem to be a lot of preservation going on that Angel could see. It was a neighborhood in the throes of gentrification, where the rich and the poor lived side-by-side in the shadow of the downtown skyline. Demitra's small house was dwarfed by a row of shiny new condos just a few doors down.

She invited them inside to take a look around Maya's room and the rest of the house. Angel made a cursory search that didn't turn up anything unusual. The only evidence to be found was of the parade of law enforcement agents and friends and relatives who'd been traipsing through the place all day. If there were any clues around, they'd long since been trampled to dust.

Angel made a circuit of the outside of the house with Spike and Aggie trailing behind him. There were no non-human footprints outside Maya's window, nor any other evidence that a demon had been in the area. He stood in the front yard and looked up and down the street. It was hot and steamy outside, even at 11 o'clock at night, and the breeze carried the stench of dead crawdads over from the bayou. He pointed down at the corner. "There's the convenience store where Maya supposedly saw the Hairy Man."

There was no one there but a bored Korean clerk who dragged himself away from the baseball game on his tiny TV long enough to tell them he didn't know anything. "The police have been all around the neighborhood today searching for that girl," he said. "Like I told them, I haven't seen her since last week sometime."

Angel shot Aggie a questioning look and she nodded to confirm that the man was telling the truth.

"You haven't seen a hairy bloke with a big sack?" asked Spike. "Maybe cow's feet?"

The clerk stared at him. "Are you high?"

They moved on, making the block. And then another block, and another after that.

"Bugger this," said Spike eventually. "Not gonna find her just wandering aimlessly."

"Have you got a better idea?" asked Angel.

"You're the one with all the gumshoeing experience. Shouldn't we have found a clue or something by now?"

"You can't find clues if there aren't any to find."

"Bloody brilliant. This is really what you were doing all those years with that detective agency of yours? Wandering around aimlessly until you accidentally stumbled onto a clue?"

"I had a seer," snapped Angel. "It made it easier."

"Sure, you get the answer handed to you on a platter, I imagine it would."

"I see him," said Aggie suddenly.

"Who?" said Angel.

"The guy Maya thought was the Hairy Man. Look." She pointed down the street, where a man was fishing aluminum cans out of a trashcan. He had long, tangled brown hair, a bushy beard and a garbage sack thrown over his shoulder. No cow's feet, but to the mind of a seven-year-old, he probably looked like the Hairy Man.

Spike took off running. He had the man by the throat and up against the building by the time Angel and Aggie caught up to him. "Where is she?" shouted Spike. "What'd you do with that little girl, you wanker?"

"Spike, cut it out!" said Aggie. "You're hurting him."

"Well, that's sort of the point, isn't it?" said Spike.

"He didn't do it!" she said.

"You're sure?" asked Angel.

"I'm sure," said Aggie.

"Put him down, Spike," said Angel.

"All right, fine." Spike let go, reluctantly. The can collector crumpled to the sidewalk in a gasping heap.

"I'm so sorry," said Aggie, kneeling beside him. "Are you okay?"

"Course I'm not okay, I'm damn near strangled," grumbled the man.

"He thought you were someone else," said Aggie, helping the man to his feet. "Spike, give him your cigarettes."

"Sorry?" Spike stared at her open-mouthed.

"Give them to him. And apologize."

"Look, I feel bad for strangling him and all, but I'll be blowed if I'm giving him my cigs!"

Aggie fixed Spike with a look that could have flayed the paint off a wall.

"Sorry," muttered Spike, handing over a half-empty pack of cigarettes.

"We're looking for a missing girl," said Angel. "And you fit the description of our suspect."

"I heard about that girl," said the man, pulling out a cigarette. "People been out looking for her all day."

"So you haven't seen her?" asked Angel.

"Not since this morning, like I told the cops."

"This morning?" said Angel. "Where?"

The man gazed levelly at Spike. "Got a light, friend?"

Spike rolled his eyes and grudgingly fished his cigarette lighter out of his pocket.

"Thanks." The man pulled a long drag on his cigarette before continuing. "Over on Genesee, behind the _taqueria._ Like I told the cops, she was walking down the sidewalk with some old woman. A white woman. Seemed happy enough."

"Thanks," said Aggie. "Again, sorry about the strangling."

The man shook his head. "I knew I should have stayed home tonight. It's a bad night to be out."

"Why?" asked Angel.

"Can't you feel it, man? The devil's in the air tonight. If you listen real close you can hear him, coursing up the bayous and blowing through the trees." He shook his head again. "It's a bad night to be out."

The only thing Angel could hear was the rumble of a train in the distance. He cocked a questioning eyebrow at Aggie. She shrugged.

They left the can collector to enjoy his cigarettes and headed over to the Taqueria Arandas, which was only a few blocks away. It was a lead, but not a very promising one. The restaurant was closed and there was no one in sight. Angel felt sure the police had already questioned everyone in the area anyway. And even if the girl had passed by here, there wasn't any way to know where she'd gone after that. As the three of them completed a fruitless circuit around the restaurant, a cemetery came into view.

"We should search over there," said Spike.

"Why?" asked Aggie.

"Evil always likes a cemetery."

"That's such a cliche," she said.

"Maybe," said Angel. "But it's true."

The cemetery was surrounded by a six-foot chain link fence, which Angel sprang over in one easy bound.

"It's seriously unsettling when you do that," said Aggie. She looked doubtfully up at the fence. "Maybe I'll go around to the gate."

"It's probably locked," said Angel.

"Wanna boost?" offered Spike.

"No," she said stubbornly. She stuck her foot in the links and awkwardly scaled the fence. Angel stood by, ready to grab her if she started to fall, but she managed to come to a not-altogether ungainly landing on the ground beside him.

Spike followed her spryly over the fence and sniffed the air. "Don't smell any evil about," he said.

"You can't even sniff out a cross-dresser," said Angel. He didn't sense anything out of the ordinary, either, though. For a cemetery, it seemed pretty benign. It was actually kind of peaceful, if you didn't mind the bats whirling and swooping overhead as they fed on mosquitos. A huge sprawling live oak, as old the city itself by the look of it, stood up by the front gates of the two-acre lot, majestically welcoming the visitors of the dead.

"That's the Hanging Tree," said Aggie. "They used to hang people there during the Republic, all the way up through Reconstruction. And by people I mean black people, and by hang I mean lynch."

"It's lovely," said Spike. "I mean, if you're going be hanged, I imagine there are worse places to do it, right?"

It was much darker here in the cemetery, away from the streetlights, although a nimbus of orange light pollution surrounded the city, reflected by the hydrocarbon haze that clung to the horizon. A waning crescent moon emerged from behind a thick bank of clouds, casting a little more light around the graveyard.

Something was nagging at Angel, but he couldn't put his finger on what, exactly. It was like that feeling you get when you've left the iron on at home, like there's something you've forgotten. Something important. "What day is it?" he asked abruptly.

"Wednesday," said Spike.

"No, the date."

"Oh, uh, the twelfth, I think. Why?"

"Tomorrow's All Saint's Day."

"No it isn't," said Spike. "That's in the fall, that is."

"It is now," said Angel. "The pope moved it to November in the eighth century, but before that it was held on May 13th. And it was originally based on the pagan Feast of the Lemures, which was held to appease the malevolent spirits of the dead."

"How d'you know all that, then?"

He'd learned it from Wes, who'd explained it to him in that gentle teacher's voice of his back when they were tracking a clan of warlocks through Inglewood. Cordelia had made a joke, something about lemurs. "It's come up before," Angel said.

"So, what? All the malevolent ghouls and ghosties are wandering about looking to get their feast on?" asked Spike.

"Only the extremely old ones," said Angel.

Spike gazed around at the empty graveyard. "Don't see any ghosties, do you?"

"Where's Aggie?" asked Angel. He'd been so distracted hadn't even noticed her wander off.

"Over there," said Spike, pointing.

She was a few rows away, kneeling in front of one of the newer gravestones. They made their way over to her. _Antoinette Agnes Belfleur,_ read the marker. _Love beats all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things._

"Your grandmother?" said Angel quietly.

Aggie nodded. "I've never seen it before. The headstone, I mean. Do you think it's nice?"

"Very posh," said Spike. "I'd be proud it have it on my grave."

Beside it was another, slightly older stone. _Corinne Jolie Belfleur. 1955-1984. Where there is much light, the shadows are deepest._ Aggie's mother, Angel assumed.

He wondered suddenly what had happened to Wesley's body. Had someone seen to a proper burial, or had he simply been disposed of, swept under the carpet like so much dust? He pushed the thought aside. If he started to go down that road he might never come back. And for the moment, at least, he had something else to do.

"We're not going to find her, are we?" said Aggie. "We've been looking half the night."

 _When the chips are down and you're at the end of your rope, you need someone you can count on_ ... Doyle's voice, captured on a cheap videotape, mocking him.

"We'll find her," said Angel, with more conviction than he felt.

 _And that's what you'll find here. Someone who'll go all the way, who'll protect you no matter what. So don't lose hope_ ...

Aggie stood up and brushed the dirt from her knees. Then she bent over and picked something up off the ground. Something small and brightly colored, almost hidden in the grass beside her grandmother's headstone.

"What is it?" asked Angel.

"Just a barrette," said Aggie.

Angel looked at it. And then he looked again. "That's Maya's barrette."

"Sure it is."

"No, it is. She was wearing it in the photo her mother gave us." He pulled the picture out of his pocket to compare. They were identical.

"Damn," said Aggie. "You are good."

"Can you sense anything from it?" asked Angel.

She closed her hand around it for a second, then shook her head. "Nothing. But it'd have to be connected to something traumatic for me to get anything from it."

"I'd imagine abduction's generally pretty traumatic for a kid," observed Spike.

"Yeah, but unless the object itself is the focus of the trauma, I'm not going to get anything from it."

"That's a bit a weird, though, right?" said Spike. "Finding it by your grandmother's grave like that."

"It is," said Aggie, looking unsettled.

Angel heard the edge of a sound carried elusively on the wind. Faint. Beckoning. It was a voice. Delicate and sing-songy, like a child reciting a nursery rhyme. "Do you hear that?" he said.

"What?" said Spike.

 _"Oh, Mother, how pretty the moon looks tonight, she was never so cunning before ..."_

"I don't hear anything," said Aggie.

Angel walked past her, in the direction the voice was coming from.

 _"... her two little horns are too sharp and so bright, I hope they'll not grow any more ..."_

"Sounds like singing," said Spike, following Angel.

"It sounds like a little girl singing, right?" Aggie trailed after them. "Could that be Maya?"

 _"... if I were up there with you and the moon, we'd rock in it nightly, you see ..."_

"What's a little girl doing singing in a cemetery in the middle of the night?" asked Spike.

"Giving me the heebie jeebies, is what," said Aggie.

 _"... we'd call to the stars to get out of our way, 'lest we should rock over their toes ..."_

Angel followed the sound into the oldest part of the cemetery. The grass was tall enough back here that it reached almost to his waist. A lot of the headstones were so discolored, worn, or covered with moss they were illegible, but he passed a couple that clearly dated back to the Civil War. Most of the markers were small, with a few larger monuments scattered here and there. There was also a large crypt up ahead. The bushes around it were so overgrown it took him a moment to even realize it was there. He pointed. "I think that's where it's coming from."

 _"... and there we would stay 'til the dawn of the day, and see where the pretty moon goes."_

The three of them walked around to the front of the crypt. There sat Maya, alone, happily playing jacks. She stopped and looked up at them, smiling. "Are you here for the picnic?"


	4. Chapter 4

Something about the girl creeped Aggie the hell out, but she couldn't quite put her finger on what. It's just a little girl, she told herself, there's nothing scary about that. A little girl sitting in a graveyard. Singing a creepy-ass song in the middle of the damn night. Okay, not helping. _Think about nice things that aren't creepy._ Like kittens. Cute, fluffy, kitteny thoughts.

Neither of the guys seemed particularly eager to make the first overture. And as the only owner of a uterus in the party, Aggie supposed it was up to her to approach the girl so they didn't spook her too badly. _But what if she spooks me?_ said a voice in her head. She told the voice to shut up.

"Hi, Maya," she said. "That's a nice song you were singing."

"My momma taught it to me," said the girl, bouncing her ball and sweeping up a handful of jacks.

"Your momma's really worried about you, she's been looking for you all day."

"I'm on sevensies," said Maya. "Auntie Pockets says seven's my lucky number because I'm seven years old and I was born on the seventh of July, and July is the seventh month." She bounced the ball again.

Yeah, something about the girl was definitely not right. In Aggie's experience, kids Maya's age were a suspicious, cagey bunch who'd had so many warnings about Stranger Danger burned into their brains they knew better than to let three strange adults approach them and strike up a conversation. Maya was showing no apprehension at all, and no surprise that they'd known her name. The girl hadn't even reacted when Aggie mentioned her mother. In fact, she wasn't giving off any emotions; her aura was just a big fat blank, like she was asleep or something.

Aggie started to move towards her, but Angel put a hand on her arm to stop her. "How'd you get here, Maya?" he asked. "Do you remember?"

"Auntie Pockets brought me. We're having a picnic."

Aggie looked around. There was no one in sight. "Can you see Auntie Pockets right now?"

Maya laughed. "No, silly, she's inside getting the picnic ready."

Aggie's eyes went to the door to the crypt. At first glance it had appeared closed, but now she could see that it was just slightly ajar. Someone was inside.

"Would you like to come to our picnic? I'll ask Auntie Pockets if we have enough cookies."

"That's okay," said Aggie, "don't—"

"Auntie Pockets!" called the girl. "Can my new friends come to our picnic?"

Angel stepped in front of Aggie, putting himself between her and whatever might be in the crypt. The door began to creak open—

A sweet-looking old lady stepped out, holding a Nutter Butter in her hand. "Here, poppet," she said, handing it to the girl. "Have a cookie." The old lady looked up at them and smiled. "I'm not sure I have enough food for all of you, but I'm sure we can share with our new friends, right poppet?"

"Right, Auntie."

Aggie blinked. The messages her brain was sending her made no sense. One second she was looking at a perfectly harmless old woman, but then the image seemed to flicker and just for a second she caught a glimpse of a huge hairy spider, as tall as a horse and as black as the space between the stars. Then she saw the old woman again, and then another flicker and it was fat, bloated woman, naked except for a sheathed knife hanging from a belt around her waist. In her hand she held a heart, still beating and dripping bright red blood.

"What's the matter, dearie?" said the woman, looking at her curiously.

Something about the woman was Very Wrong. Whatever she was, was definitely not a sweet little old lady. "She's wearing a glamour," warned Aggie. "She's not what she seems."

Spike and Angel didn't move.

"Angel," she said, tugging at his arm. He didn't react. His face was utterly slack and expressionless. Worse, his aura had gone blank. It was still there, it was just ... empty. She looked over at Spike, but he was just as zombified as Angel.

"He can't hear you, dear, neither of them can." The old woman gazed at her keenly. "You're a special one, aren't you? Saw through my glamour and resisted my thrall. Someone's taught you very well. Pity."

Aggie ran. She didn't think, she just did it. Her feet were moving even before she was conscious of her hindbrain screaming at her to get away, as far away as possible. Right. Now.

"Stop her," she heard the woman say behind her. Aggie ran harder—she could feel the adrenaline coursing through her body—as hard and as fast as she'd ever run from anything.

It wasn't enough. Not nearly enough.

Something hit her in the back, hard enough to knock the air out of her lungs and send her crashing to the ground. Icy arms wrapped around her in a grip as strong as steel cable as she fell. She and Angel hit the ground together, the vampire controlling their roll so that Aggie ended up face down with the full weight of his body on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

Angel hauled Aggie to her feet. She struggled in his grasp, but he was unimaginably strong. "Angel, snap out of it," she pleaded. "She's controlling you, but you can fight it. Please, Angel, you have to fight it."

His face remained perfectly impassive as he began to drag her back to the crypt. There was no malice there, none of the brutality she knew he was capable of, just that same blankness that had taken over his aura.

"Bring her inside, dear," called the woman. "And you, bring the little girl. It's almost midnight." She walked back into the crypt. Spike took Maya by the hand and followed her inside.

Aggie's mind raced as she continued to struggle. She couldn't get away from Angel, but maybe she could at least slow him down a little, buying some time before he dragged her inside that crypt. She needed to break the thrall, but how? It hadn't affected her, but she had no idea why. The woman said she'd resisted it, but she hadn't done anything. So why was she immune?

As Angel hauled Aggie across the rough, overgrown ground she felt something cold thump against her chest. The amulet. Of course. It was made of iron. That must have been what protected her. Maybe if she could get Angel to touch the iron on her pendant it would break the thrall. Unfortunately, he had her arms pinned to her side and there was no way she was going to break free. But, hang on, old graveyards were full of iron. They used to use it for the fences around the burial sites, to contain the spirits of dead. She cast her eyes around and sure enough, there was a low wrought iron fence surrounding one of the plots ahead. If she could get Angel to touch it, maybe it would break the spell.

She stopped struggling and pretended to cooperate, letting her feet fall into step with his. Just as she'd hoped, he loosened his grip a little, allowing her to walk under her own power. She was lucky: while he was under the thrall he wasn't nearly as careful and suspicious as he was when his mind was clear. Otherwise, he never would have let his guard down so easily.

As they drew alongside the iron fence Aggie pretended to stumble. Angel bent over to haul her upright and she threw her head back as hard as she could. There was a sickening crunch of cartilage as her skull made contact with Angel's nose. While he was recovering from that she twisted around and leveraged both feet off the ground, kicking out against a nearby monument hard enough to send them both staggering backwards. Angel stumbled and fell backward onto the spear-topped pickets of the fence, pulling Aggie down on top of him and driving himself onto the points even harder. She heard him cry out in pain and he let go of her. She tumbled off of him ass over elbow and only narrowly avoiding breaking her neck on a tombstone. As it was her head thumped painfully against the hard stone, causing her vision to explode in burst of flashing white lights.

"Aggie?" Angel's voice, hardly more than a whisper. A groan, then, "Aggie, are you all right?"

"I'm okay," she managed, pushing herself upright.

"I didn't hurt you, did I?"Angel had extricated himself from the fence. Blood seeped freely from two puncture wounds in his back and from his nose.

"Nothing a few Advil can't fix," she said, standing up unsteadily. "You're you again, right?"

"Yes," he said, swiping a sleeve across his face to wipe away the blood. "I was aware of everything. I could hear you talking to me, but I couldn't do anything about it. How'd you break the spell?"

"It's the iron. Impervious to malevolent spirits. Sorry about the impaling, by the way."

"Don't worry about it," said Angel. He bent over and ripped a length of the ancient fence out of the ground. Then he began to break off the individual pickets so that he had a handful of iron spears. Aggie knew the stuff was probably brittle with age, but even so, the strength that must be required to do such a thing was staggering.

"Remember," she told him, "you can't let go of the iron, not even for a second, or she'll put you back under her thrall. Speaking as a puny human that would be bad for me."

"I'm pretty sure I've still got a few shards of that fence stuck in my back, but I'll be careful. You ready?"

Aggie nodded. "Let's go finish off that bitch."

It didn't take long. They pretended that Aggie was still Angel's captive and walked into the crypt with the iron spears concealed behind her back. Maya was lying on the stone floor while the woman sharpened an extremely old and nasty-looking stone knife. She looked up when they entered and had just enough time to shout, "Stop them!" at Spike, before Angel threw one of his iron spears. It lodged in her eye as Spike started toward them. The woman screamed and fell backward. As she fell she began to change form, her body undulating and bulging grotesquely. Aggie didn't wait around to see what happened next. She scooped up Maya, who had begun to cry, and ran out of the crypt.

"It's all right," she crooned, hugging the girl. "You're safe now. We're gonna take you home to your momma."

Behind her, she could hear Spike begin to cuss a blue streak, and she clapped her hands over the little girl's ears. There was a series of muffled thumps followed by a few loud crashes, and then the two vampires emerged from the crypt.

"Is she dead?" mouthed Aggie so Maya wouldn't hear.

Angel nodded.

"Yeah, and I gave her a good kicking, too," said Spike. "Just to be sure. Damned old biddy, putting a thrall on me."

  
They took Maya home to her very grateful mother. Demitra tried to pay them for their help, and then switched to forcing food on them when it became obvious they weren't going to take any of her money. After a lot of hugging and crying, they managed to get away with nothing more than a sweet potato pie and four pounds of foil-wrapped spareribs.

"So what was that thing anyway?" asked Aggie when they were back in the van, driving home. "Some kind of witch?"

"Cithirith demon," said Angel. "Big into black magic. They can basically live forever as long as they devour the heart of an innocent every year."

"Sounds lovely. They don't happen to look like a big-ass hairy spider in their natural form, do they?"

"How did you know?" said Angel.

"I could see through her glamour." Aggie shuddered. "That harpy queen of the arachnids is gonna be the star attraction in my nightmares for a while."

She turned onto Decatur Street and parked the Volkswagen in the gravel driveway beside the towering oleanders. The three of them went in through the back door of the house. The clock on the microwave said 2:08; Aggie couldn't believe she wasn't more tired.

"That was a proper bit of fun, wasn't it?" said Spike cheerfully.

"Yeah, it's always a party with you two around," said Aggie.

"I'm going to go wash this blood off," said Angel. Aggie watched him walk upstairs. He moved stiffly, like he was still in some pain. She wondered how long it'd take for those puncture wounds to heal. And speaking of healing—

She went to the freezer, took out a bag of frozen peas and sank down into a chair, pressing the frozen vegetables against her sore back like a compress.

"Get a bit knocked around, did we?" said Spike.

"As it turns out," she said, "getting tackled by a vampire is not at all like being knocked over with a feather."

"Let's have a look, then." He came over and stood behind her. She moved the compress and lifted up the back of her shirt so he could see her lower back. He tutted over her like a school nurse and felt along her ribs with cool fingers. "The fact you're not screaming in pain says you haven't broken any ribs. I reckon you'll live."

She sank back against the compress again. "Don't tell Angel, okay?"

"Pretty sure he already knows, the way he high-tailed it out of here just now. He prefers to do his self-flagellating in private."

Aggie snorted. "I certainly hope so."

"Dirty girl," said Spike. They shared a smile. "Well," he said. "I believe I'll be heading up to Bedfordshire."

"Goodnight," said Aggie.

The book Angel had been reading earlier that evening was still on the table, beside the box of tissues she'd gotten out for Demitra. It was Dante's _Divine Comedy._ She thumbed it open to a random page—

 _Through me you pass into the city of woe:  
Through me you pass into eternal pain:   
Through me among the people lost for aye.   
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:   
To rear me was the task of power divine,   
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.   
Before me things create were none, save things   
Eternal, and eternal I shall endure.   
All hope abandon, ye who enter here._

Cheerful. No wonder he was so damned depressed. She closed the book, leaned back and closed her eyes. She stayed that way until she realized she was starting to doze off. The peas had lost a lot of of their cold and begun to get mushy, but her back felt a little better at least. She got up and put the bag of peas back in the freezer. When she turned around there was a single tissue rose lying on the kitchen table.

It had been one of her grandmother's special tricks, making a rose out of single sheet of Kleenex. She used to do it all the time when Aggie was little. She'd pack them into Aggie's lunchbox or tuck them into the pockets of her freshly laundered shirts, a little surprise to remind her granddaughter that she was loved.

Aggie picked up the rose and sniffed the delicate tissue petals as if it were a real flower. It smelled faintly, but distinctly, of Avon's Unforgettable.

She carried the rose into the front parlor and opened the walnut chifferobe where all her grandmother's idols and fetishes were kept. She set the rose on one of the shelves, next to the statue of Saint Anne. "Thank you," she said, in case anyone was listening.

There was a little string of prayer beads draped around Saint Anne, small rough cut stones of snow quartz and black tourmaline in a seemingly random, but very specific pattern. She took the beads, closed the chifferobe, and went upstairs.

She could hear Angel moving around up in the attic. She hesitated, then climbed the dark narrow steps to the attic and knocked on the door. "Come in," he said.

His hair was still wet from the shower; he was wearing a pair of black jeans she'd bought him at the Assistance League Thrift Shop and nothing else. He was twisted around, trying to position a bandage over the two scabbed-over puncture wounds that puckered the skin of his lower back.

"Let me help," she said.

"Thanks," he said when she'd fastened the bandage in place. He walked across the room and grabbed a shirt that was draped on the back of a chair.

He'd done a lot of work up here in the last two days. Most of the boxes and old furniture that had been stored in the attic were pushed over to one side, piled up in front of the attic's only window to block the sunlight. He'd brought up one of the beds from downstairs, a small desk, a couple of chairs and an old wardrobe. A brass lamp with a fringed ochre shade bathed the space in sepia-colored light.

"About earlier," she said, uncomfortably. "I think I owe you an apology. I can be kind of a nosy-ass bitch sometimes."

He finished buttoning his shirt and looked up at her, all innocence. "Really?"

She stared at him. "Are you using sarcasm on me?"

"Maybe." The barest hint of a smile hovered at the corner of his mouth.

She shook her head, amused. "So he does have a sense of humor. Who knew?"

"Aggie," he said, and hesitated. "I know I haven't exactly been easy to be around. You've done a lot for me and it's not that I'm not grateful, it's just ... I lost everything that mattered to me. It's not something you just bounce back from."

"I know that."

"I will, though, eventually. I just need some time, okay?"

"And maybe for me to back off a little, right?"

"Maybe just a little."

"I can give you more space. In fact, I can give you lots of space." She held out the string of beads. "This is for you."

He took it from her and held it in the palm of his hand, running his thumb over the small black and white stones. "What is it?"

"A mindward. It was my grandmother's. When you're wearing it, you'll be completely shielded from psychics. I won't be able to see your aura or read your mind or anything."

He looked up at her, surprised. His eyes were soft and brown in the yellow light. "I don't know what to say."

"Put it on."

As soon as he slipped the beads around his wrist it was like the sun coming out. All the gloom that had been emanating from him vanished, like it had never been there in the first place. Aggie smiled. "Lovely."

"You really can't read me anymore?"

"Not whiff."

He shook his head slowly. "Your grandmother used to wear this? To shield herself from you?"

Aggie shrugged. "Everyone's entitled to their secrets."

"Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome." There was a silence. "Okay," she said. "I'm gonna go now." She turned to leave.

"Connor's my son," said Angel.

She spun around and stared at him. "But vampires can't—"

"It's a really long story."

"Apparently." She paused. "But I'm not asking you to tell it. See how I'm giving you space? There's you and here's me and look at all this space in between us. I'm not even tempted to ask about your miracle vampire progeny."

He smiled faintly. "I can tell."

"You know it's killing me, right?"

"I do, yes."

"Just so you're properly appreciative."

"I am."

"Okay," she said. "Well, goodnight."

"Goodnight," he said softly as she pulled the door closed behind her.

She climbed back down the narrow steps to the second floor landing.

"How's Mr. Broodypants doing?"

She walked over to the open door of Spike's bedroom. He was lying on top of the bedspread with his boots still on, leafing through an ancient _Reader's Digest._

"I don't have any idea," she said, leaning against the doorjamb. "I gave him a mindward. It shields him so I can't read him anymore."

"Yeah? Where's my present, then?"

"I only had one," she told him. "Anyway, I thought you didn't care if I read your mind."

"Don't want to be left out is all." He narrowed his eyes. "You do it for him or for you?"

"Both."

He nodded. "Fair enough."

She sat down on the room's only chair, a floral print wingback that smelled inexplicably of parmesan cheese. "How's the reading?"

"Joe's duodenum sounds like a right tosser." He sighed and tossed the _Reader's Digest_ onto the floor.

She smiled at him. "Even if I had another mindward I wouldn't give it to you. You've got a nice aura: strong, steady, and a very fetching shade of chartreuse. I'd miss it if I couldn't see it anymore."

He cocked one eyebrow warily. "If you're being nice to me I may faint from shock."

"Alas, the fainting couch is downstairs in the parlor."

"Well, bless your cotton socks," he said. "Nice to hear someone likes having me around for a change."

"We both do," she said seriously. "You're good for him, even if he won't admit it.

"How do you figure that?"

"You've got a shared history. That's important, especially now."

His expression darkened. "It's not a very nice history, luv. The two of us have done a lot of bad things together. Things you don't even want to imagine. It's the real reason we get on each other's tits so badly. Neither of us likes to be reminded of who we used to be."

"You've been through hell together and made it out the other side," she said. " _And thence you came forth to see again the stars._ "

"You getting poetical on me? 'Cause I know a thing or two about poetry."

"No," she said, standing up. "I'm going to bed."

"Sleep tight," he said. "Don't let the Cithirith demons bite."

"By the way," she called from the hallway. "I probably forgot to mention, the house is haunted."

"What?!" she heard Spike say.

She smiled and shut her bedroom door. Then she got ready for bed and crawled under the covers, which smelled only slightly of Avon's Unforgettable. If she was going to be anywhere, she thought, she might as well be here. And she fell into a deep and peaceful and dreamless sleep, for the first time since she'd come home.

THE END


End file.
